Bootstraps and Bindings
by Dante Montoya
Summary: William has a late-night realisation that winning the battle may have meant losing other things...


BOOTSTRAPS AND BINDINGS  
  
Author: Dante Montoya  
  
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean  
  
Concept: William has a late-night realisation that winning the battle may have meant losing other things...  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, the time, the ships or the overall situation. I'm just playing with them because I had unanswered questions and unfulfilled ideals. I make no profit from this, I can barely make ends meet. Thank Disney for corrupting me and putting this story in my head... and if you ARE from Disney... I really don't have enough money to make it worthwhile to sue me and I already decided not to work for you in an animation slave-shop.  
  
Rating: PG now, but I may change that if I let this plot run away.  
  
Warnings: Spoilers I should think... not sure if I'll continue, this is written to stand alone if need be because if I don't finish in one sitting I never seem to.  
  
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BOOTSTRAPS AND BINDINGS  
  
iWilliam could taste the salt on the air, feel the press of bodies all around him. He could even smell the sweat and dirt on the pirates to either side of him. Upon glancing over his shoulder William is shocked to see the rolling wooden eye of one of the Black Pearl's crew staring unseeing at him... the owner's working eye sharing that expression as the man stares ahead, yelling and cajoling with the rest of the crew. They cannot see the blacksmith.  
  
"String him up!"  
  
"Cast him away!"  
  
"Kill him!"  
  
"He was never with us!"  
  
The young man being pushed forward upon the surge of the pirates' crowd, wondered with a sort of detached feeling if he was going to see Jack marooned this day even as the salty breeze off the water tumbles his hair like a lurid lover. He could see Barbossa leaning against the front of the Captain's cabin then, lurking in the shade of the overhang with that newly acquired pet monkey of his. Hiding, as it were, from the sun as though his oversized black hat did not do the trick today.  
  
His voice is as thick and oily as his unkept salt and pepper hair, his pock-marked nose protruding forward from the greasy falls of it, "Well now... I suppose this has to do with our treatment of your dear ragged whelp, eh?" Malice filling his voice, the crew laughs, jeers and covers any reply from William's ears.  
  
Whelp? William is left to wonder. That's what the pirates called him, William's mind was whirling, but if this was a dream then it needn't make sense. He doesn't draw attention to himself and merely listens.  
  
"Hmm?" Barbossa stepping forward then, sneering at someone unseen by William through the press of bodies between them. "Tell me, why did you not speak up the day it happened?" Those beady black eyes mocking with a twist of the cruel mouth, "Instead you let this all happen with him thinking you just as traitorous as the rest of us..." Will's brows furrow together, his sleep-addled brains not getting any of this as Barbossa continues to bait his quarry. "Think he's shot his brains out yet?"  
  
The crew's laughter is rough and inhuman but it silences at a sudden unmistakable sound which makes Barbossa jerk back, too late, sporting a trail of clinging spit dangling over his right eye which makes him snarl and wipe at his face with a fist. Snapping at the crew men to fetch some riggings as he whirls away, Barbossa in a rage. The crowd scatters to do as they are bid, and Will can see... that being held by that burly tribally marked black pirate a man who looks strikingly like Will's own reflection glaring hatefully after the deceitful first mate come Captain.  
  
The elder Bill Turner struggles against his captor, others joining the first pirate in dragging their shipmate to the edge of the deck, the sea-faring man cursing. William felt rooted to the deck where he stood. Watching his father as he's hauled to his fate, and quite unexpectedly... his father is suddenly watching him back. Twin sets of brown eyes meet over the passage of time, fear and determination mingling between their gaze. Their brows furrow in mutual confusion before the spell is broken and William's father was struggling once again. Rough hands pushed him down atop the cannon, closing the buckles which are sewn to his boots about the riggings they've attached to the great iron weapon.   
  
Barbossa is sauntering up through the crew once again, black-beetle eyes laughing as he claps a hand down on Bill's shoulder in a mock gesture of brotherhood, "Billy, Billy my boy, you were a good man... but a terrible pirate." Shaking his head, dropping his voice in as icy threat while the crew laughs around them, half-whispering though young William can oddly hear it, "...now who's going to send precious letters to your bonnie English lass? ...me, I suppose."   
  
The Captain yelling to shove him overboard even as Bootstrap screams out that he'll see Barbossa dead. The groan of canon wheels half hides the angry words, Barbossa flicking his hand dismissively as the canon plunges overboard. Bill Turner's cries abruptly ending then with a splash.  
  
Things do not end there though, at the sound of Iron hitting water the blacksmith's perspective changes and William feels the warm salty liquid filling his mouth, his lungs, struggling for air a moment from instinct alone. Until, that is, he cannot fight it anymore, and a stream of great silver-green bubbles escapes him, rushing up and away towards the rapidly shrinking silhouette of the Black Pearl.   
  
The water is growing cold as he's pulled down by his feet, darkness starting to close in around him, yet he glances to the side with his lungs burning, full of salt water. His eyes in the blurry half-light see a face so like his own looking back at him, caught in a tortured expression, feeling the same pains. Those brown eyes half open, watching him as darkness closes about the father and son. Dragged down by Bootstrap's bootstraps.   
  
William in the fear and in the cold of the ocean, just before the darkness grows complete, can swear that he's looking half through his father's features to the moving bones beneath as his last sight of the man.   
  
Blind terror assails William, unable to tell the passage of time in that complete darkness of the depths, yet he knows that ages pass with just the feeling of his father's skeletal arms around him. That alone is what keeps Williams senses in this all encompassing silence. Then... with a start he feels a slice on his hand, lifting it with a jerk. Shocked eyes fighting in the darkness and sea water to see his own blood which he knows is seeping from his attacked flesh into the ocean which bites and burns the wound.   
  
The curse is broken.  
  
Free, they're free of death.  
  
Barbossa is bleeding in the cave somewhere.  
  
He's merely shocked a moment before the arms around him solidify, the curse lifting from his father as well, but then Bootstrap's arms are spasming in sudden pain. Sudden feeling. William's arms cling to his Father then, feeling flesh there, icy cold as the man's death finally comes for him after years waiting in the sea. William terrified that this man who is his childhood ideal, who's presence has always meant so much to him in the back of his mind even as he grew up without him, is suddenly dying before him.  
  
Good man. Good pirate. Dying.   
  
Struggling to live the very moment his son triumphs and celebrates in life. William knew then that in that very moment.... that his father would think Barbossa has killed his son, and death would claim him in the crushing depths with that belief in his mind.  
  
Opening his mouth, tasting bitter cold sea water, William tried to scream./i  
  
And wakes sitting up in his bunk behind the Blacksmith shop, his sweat chilled on his skin and eyes wide, unseeing a moment in the darkness before bitter tears well in his eyes. Spilling down over long lashes to slip down his cheeks. Tasting the salt as he tasted the sea in his nightmare.  
  
"...father?"  
  
Shaken by the lack of ghostly arms around him in the darkness. Knowing now... his father's death is on his head. The man had never left him, he had never abandoned him... but Will's actions let that dreadful cold finalise Bill Turner's fate.   
  
i  
  
I killed my father.  
  
/i  
  
Alone in that darkness, something William must carry for the rest of his life, welling up and taking the last vestige of boyhood from him.  
  
...FINI? 


End file.
